


we are question marks that hang above the endless unexplained

by LittleLostStar



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Femme fatale Rey, Flashbacks, Happy Ending, Introspection, idiots to lovers, nightclub owner Kylo Ren, ultimately good boy Ben Solo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29280978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: The first time she walked into his club, she was looking for a job. Kylo took one look at her—the stubborn pout of her lip, the determined glint in her eyes, the ruddy glow of her face where the sun had kissed it—and swallowed a lump in his throat that was shaped like the words you’re too good for this place.They needed a singer. Kira Johnson could hold a tune, knew the old standards, and had a knockout pair of tits to boot. A few slinky ballgowns and a touch of lipstick, and she’d more than do the trick of distracting suckers long enough to part them from their money.The club solely needed to break even; anything they made on top of the Syndicate’s cut was gravy, and Kylo Ren had been lining his pockets with his own take for long enough that he could see Kira for the lump of clay that she was: rough-hewn, misshapen, but soft and supple and sure to curve under his touch.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 8
Kudos: 41
Collections: To Find Your Kiss: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	we are question marks that hang above the endless unexplained

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlwaysEverlark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysEverlark/gifts).



> Many thanks to RFFA for letting me be part of the exchange! <3

_“ Now all the traffic lights obey   
As they usher us from town   
To some suburban underground   
But we are flightless birds   
We are question marks that hang   
Above the endless unexplained   
  
This paragraph, this mythology   
A cigarette and gasoline into the air we breathe   
__Oh, fake your death and I’ll fake mine.”_ \- [Whitehorse](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po86O-19HmA)   


The First Order Supper Club is empty now, and that’s always the way Ben Solo liked it most. The space is charming when it’s empty; the overhead lights cast shadows of promise across the backdrop of the stage and the curving Art Deco trim, but those same shadows also contain the darkest of things—the sort of nightmares that evade even the brightest spotlight’s glow.

Ben strove for those shadows, once upon a time. Now, as he puts the final chair up on its table, he finds himself biting back a smirk at the irony of it all.

~

_ The first time she walked into his club, she was looking for a job. Kylo took one look at her—the stubborn pout of her lip, the determined glint in her eyes, the ruddy glow of her face where the sun had kissed it—and swallowed a lump in his throat that was shaped like the words  _ you’re too good for this place.

_ They needed a singer. Kira Johnson could hold a tune, knew the old standards, and had a knockout pair of tits to boot. A few slinky ballgowns and a touch of lipstick, and she’d more than do the trick of distracting suckers long enough to part them from their money. _

_ The club solely needed to break even; anything they made on top of the Syndicate’s cut was gravy, and Kylo Ren had been lining his pockets with his own take for long enough that he could see Kira for the lump of clay that she was: rough-hewn, misshapen, but soft and supple and sure to curve under his touch. _

“ _ This place isn’t a family,” he said, blowing a stream of cigarette smoke to the ceiling. “You’ll be paid in cash every Friday, and pool your tips with the rest of the staff. I don’t give a fuck what you do other than that, as long as you keep your mouth shut when it isn’t singing.” _

_ Kira had swallowed. He remembered it, because it was the first time he noticed the elegant length of her neck, the little dip in her collarbone where it peeked out from under her too-large trench coat. _

“ _ I can do that,” she replied, a little too easily. _

She won’t last more than a week, _ Kylo mused to himself, stubbing out his cigarette.  _ Probably not long enough to justify putting her on the payroll.

_ But there was something about her, something intangible and ineffable and inescapable, something that pulled the words “you’re hired” out of Kylo’s mouth before he even registered the sentiment. _

~

“ The light,” Ben murmurs to himself, passing by the impeccably-cleaned bar and through the swinging doors embossed with  _ Staff Only _ in crumbling faux gold leaf. He rolls his eyes affectionately; tonight’s the first night since the club opened that Finn hasn’t been around to snap at him about getting the doors repainted.

There was once a time, not too long ago, when Ben found these kinds of details irritating at best. He takes a deep breath, his lungs expanding and his shoulders held high, inhaling the faint odours of cigarette smoke and alcohol that permeate every inch of the interior.

He’s always known he was going to die here. Now that it’s actually happening, Ben finds he’s more nostalgic than he expected.

~

_ Kira was phenomenal. _

_ No one expected much, of course; the First Order was all just a front for the Skywalker Syndicate, and it wasn’t a particularly subtle one either. The pianist, Poe Dameron, only knew about half a dozen of the old standards; but with Kira onstage, the songs sounded fresh and raw and new. Her voice soared effortlessly through the club, carrying the emotions of every note and word as if she was coming up with everything right on the spot. _

_ Kylo couldn’t be bothered, or at least that’s what he told himself. But the club started raking in money, as people began to come specifically to see the show. It was a little bewildering; the club wasn’t remotely set up for actual dining for actual non-criminals, but somehow Kira seemed to cast a spell on the rest of the staff, and the honest work energized them. Phasma stopped growling at the busboys; Finn’s food actually began to taste like it was worth a damn. The tables began to fill up: first to half capacity, then to three-quarters, and finally selling out on a regular basis. _

_ This intrusion in Kylo’s little domain drove him closer to madness than he thought imaginable. She was like a sliver under his skin, and no matter how he tried he couldn’t wrench himself free. It was almost inevitable that the tension would spill over into words; Kylo’s temper was everyone’s business, and Kira remained stubbornly unable or unwilling to digest that fact. _

_ He called her into his office one night, late after everyone else had gone home, and he intended to fire her—but she refused to bend, refused to waver, fought back like a wild and feral thing, and at some point their fury transformed. The fever rose, fuelled by the warmth of her flesh against his, and it seemed as if it might never break. _

Just once, _ he thought, panting into her sweet-smelling hair as he came down from his release.  _ To get it out of my system.

~

Once upon a time, Ben knew the difference between fury and adoration. Now, as he effortlessly avoids every creaky floorboard in the back halls, he reaches out to the wainscoting and gives it an affectionate pat.

Ben Solo has always loved passionately, fiercely, overwhelmingly. He thinks he can see the line now, the flashpoint between love and hate, like the strip on a pack of matches.

What was it his uncle used to say?  _ Better late than never. _ He still isn’t sure if that’s entirely true.

Tonight, under a black sky and a new moon, it’s certainly too late for everything else.

~

_ He was sure she’d be the one to break, but in the end Kylo succumbed first, and in hindsight it seemed as obvious as the sun setting in the west. _

_ One encounter became two, and two became three. At first, the two of them followed a familiar pattern: a rising action, a simmering animosity set to boil, an unrelenting tension that could only ever resolve itself in the most primal means imaginable. The thrill of organized crime began to feel rote, almost mundane, compared to the intensity of how Kira made him feel on those nights; the memory of how she shuddered beneath him began to fuel his waking hours and haunt his dreams. _

_ Never again, he would say. Never again, never again. This is the last time. _

_ But then Kira would slip into his office like a shadow, and every effort to resist the circle of her arms became hilariously futile. _

_ Kylo reached further and further into the depths of his soul to summon what he needed to provoke her again and again, and afterwards she would comb her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair and whisper all the devastatingly honest things she had noticed about him: that he was lonely, that he was afraid, that he kept a simmering pot of regret on the back burner as he let his anger harden into a carapace strong enough to bear the cruelty of the life he chose. _

“ _ You’re so close to burning all of this down that I can see the match in your hand,” she whispered one night, face still flush as he traced the artful curve of her bare collarbone. _

“ _ I burned everything else down to get here,” he had replied, before he could think the better of it. _

_ Kira was beautiful, but never more so than the moment when she took his face in her hands and tilted her forehead to rest against his.“Full of light. That’s what you are.” _

~

Finn must have cleared out on Sunday; it was inventory day, and the kitchen staff of the First Order Supper Club were nothing if not efficient. Ben is both amused and disappointed to find that they’ve left the place spotless, gleaming like a magazine ad, with nary a crumb for a wayward traveler on a one-way journey to obliteration. Phasma, at least, had enough nostalgia to leave a bottle of gin—Ben’s favourite, he notes—behind the otherwise spotless bar.

In any other situation, the cleanliness of the club would be suspicious. Now, it feels like a proper send-off. Ben’s father always did say it:  _ get out clean, kid, and never let the bastards get you cornered. _

What a fantastically unique life he could have had, if only hadn’t sought to snuff the light from his own eyes before anyone else could.

~

_ One night he walked into his own office to find Kira sitting in his chair, with her feet propped up on the desk and one of his hats perched on her head. _

“ _ What are you doing here?” Kylo growled, only to freeze in place at the sound of a pistol being cocked. _

“ _ I’m the granddaughter of Sheev Palpatine,” she smirked, as she levelled the gun with a far too steady hand. “My real name is Rey. And I know who you are, too, Ben Solo.”  _

~

It should have fallen apart right at that moment. And, in a manner of speaking, that’s exactly what happened. Kylo Ren was shot dead that night, and the bullet still twinges between his ribs whenever Ben Solo thinks about it.

~

“ _ You need to get out of here,” he’d whispered once, in one of their countless moments of post-coital clarity. _

“ _ Come with me, then,” she’d replied, and the light in her eyes was so bright that he had to physically close his mouth around the word  _ yes _ so it couldn’t escape. _

~

“ Yes,” Ben says now, as he unlocks his office door. He can immediately see the outline of a dozen gas cans on the ground, barely lit silver from the gloomy light in the hall.

The syndicate has taken everything from Ben Solo. It’s taken the people he loves, the freedom he forgot to cherish, and it’s even taken his own name. There’s no way out—not when it’s your own family. Not when you’ve already burned down everything. Not when you’ve let the past die over and over again, so much that the plumes of smoke obliterate all pretence of the future from the horizon.

It’s so easy. It’s always been this easy, but Ben never let himself believe it.

He’ll die tonight, lost in the fire that consumes his club. His insurance will be denied for obvious fraud; the Skywalker Syndicate, if it lives up to its reputation for greed, will doom itself to discovery by pursuing the ill-gotten gains to be mined from the death of their golden son. A fitting ending to a far-too-long saga of pain and corruption.

And yet.

He will walk out of the doors, reborn anew, without a name or a reputation or a single cent. He will start all over again, with her by his side—a new life in a new place, just the two of them, because of a light that he couldn’t snuff out no matter how hard he tried. 

~

“ _ I can’t,” Kylo Ren said, again and again and again, until he actually believed it. Until he pushed everyone and everything away, crushing Ben Solo into a diamond he could smuggle away where the light couldn’t shine through it. He couldn’t be anything other than what he had allowed himself to contort to be. _

_ Until Rey Palpatine held him at gunpoint and whispered:  _ you can.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Come say hi on [Twitter](https://www.twitter.com/littlestarlost)!


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